Top hat and monocle???fencerdenoctum wrote:On pretension- I drink tea wearing a top hat and monocle.
You!!!
Hello, my name is InTEAgo Montoya. You keeled my father. Prepare to die.
Aug 5th, '08, 07:11
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Aug 5th, '08, 08:39
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So true...(sigh)...the tea industry has a tendency to be rife with pretension. What's fun about my Adagio peeps is they tend to laugh at it all and just do their own thing.ABx wrote: I think it just depends on where your focus is. While I think a person could easily be pretentious about tea, and I've met some, it's more often a way of breaking away from the pretensions of everyday life and a tool to find common ground. If you were to be really showy and snobbish and controlling about the tea experience then it could easily turn into a pretentious affair, but if you're more focused on the social aspects then I wouldn't think so (of course that may be easy for me to say...).
Of course there will always be some that feel that it is from the outside, and some that will have associations with snobby Europeans with their pinkies in the air, but I don't know if there's much you can really do in those cases.
Perhaps I'm just lucky that my friends have thus far just been interested - they just have to put up with my obsessiveness.
What does bother me is when I'm visiting family or friends and they feel that they must apologize for their tea selection. (OK, sure they can EASILY get an upgrade from me but I never, ever push people about tea.) It is always in that moment when I worry a little about pretension and how I'm coming across. I just feel bad that they are missing out or that I'm making them feel apologetic somehow. Heck, a dried out bag of Lipton isn't going to kill me..much
You know you're a TeaSnob when....
Re: Pretentiousness: A foodie's rant
Well the article might be pretentious but the restaurant is modest and delicious. Just like the cup of Ceylon Pettiagalla FOP I am drinking right now!scruffmcgruff wrote:I'm with you. Oy vey! Isn't that article's writing the same sort of pretentiousness we were trying to avoid in the first place? Those New Yorkers.
(To be fair, though, the article does leave me salivating!)
PS, and as for Tea Snobbery, I don't know... any interest or passion can probably come off as pretense to someone who doesn't share that interest.
But I like to think that I became a tea-ophile through no great virtue of my own- more like a random blessing. So I am very lucky, more so than very "skilled." And if I have good taste in Tea, what is that but good fortune anyway? I started out on Twinings!